Friday, December 8, 2017

The road to our flat was finished today!! Woo hoo!! They have been working on it for the 3 months (TODAY) that we have lived here! Elder Wold took these photos today and the others are from different stages of working on it.

When we moved in Sept. 8th, there were huge piles of rocks and dirt all the way down the road. Elder Wold would often have to get out and move big rocks to turn down the road to our complex. (The road behind him looks the same today....)

This is how it has looked for a LONG time. They spread the dirt and packed it down good.

Then we got to this stage where they were putting in the cement borders on each side.

This is how it looks right now (to the east). You can see on the left where there is now a sidewalk all along the side of the road and it's hard to see, but on the right, there is cement forming a V, where the water can drain down the road after heavy rains (like we have had for the past couple of days).

This is looking west from our complex where our road meets this main road into the neighborhood. You can see the sidewalks. It's hard to see the cement on the left

because it is full of dirt from our last three rainy days.

I finally got a pretty good photo of the HUGE Conference Center that is being built on the main highway near Mpumalanga Road that goes down to our chapel. This just shows part of it. It's too big to fit in one photo up close. It is really going to be something!!

I love these trees with the bright red-orange flowers on them! This tree is in front of our Ezulwini Elders' flat. There is a Nursery across from them and there are so many flowering trees and bushes there. It's SO pretty! I finally got a picture of this tree yesterday!

I also took these photos yesterday in Elangeni, which is across the M3 freeway from us and is part of our branch boundaries. We visit several families in this area. We were on our way to the Msisbi family's place and it was SO green and SO pretty between rainstorms, I had to get some photos!

The Msibi family lives far up on the hill and the dirt roads get pretty bad! We actually got stuck in the mud around this turn and couldn't drive any farther up where the road gets

much steeper!! They have a grove of mango trees up near their property.

(I didn't bring boots or a jacket and tried to find them here and in Johannesburg, but they just laughed, because it is summer here! But it is also the rainy season and there is a LOT of rain and a LOT of MUD!! My shoes get covered with mud when we visit on these dirt roads. It can get REALLY cold too! The heaviest thing I brought was sweaters.... Guess I will have to wait until March or April (which is their Fall here) when they get winter things in